ensemble

The festivities begin even before the characters of “One Man, Two Guvnors” enter the stage. A skiffle band (complete with washboard player) performs a pre-show set to rev up the audience for this update of a classic farce relocated to Britain on the eve of the swinging ‘60s.

The inspiration for Richard Bean’s “One Man, Two Guvnors,” now at A Noise Within in Pasadena, is “The Servant of Two Masters,” Carlo Goldoni’s mid-18th-century comedy that formalized the commedia dell’arte antics and masked characters made famous by the improvisational Italian troupes of the day. Bean’s play, set in the eccentric seaside town of Brighton, is quintessentially English by contrast. But farce is a universal language, and the hilarity is not just translated but alchemized into something riotously contemporary.

Grant Olding has written the songs that set the play’s mood, a mischievous Joe Orton-esque ambiance, only less jaundiced and more childlike. Francis Henshall (Kasey Mahaffy), a down-on-his luck busker who moves through the world like an overgrown baby, is driven more by hunger than lust, at least in the play’s first half.

His raging appetite compels him to break the fourth wall and beg the audience for a spare sandwich. When James Corden played the role in London and then on Broadway (where he won a Tony Award for his work), Francis became a figure of unstoppable gluttony. Mahaffy, who starred in the exuberant revival of “A Man of No Importance” at A Noise Within last season, is more insistently peckish — hungry rather than hangry. Sustenance is offered — a hummus sandwich, not one of the character’s favorites — but the plot won’t allow him to dig in just yet. Poor Francis has no choice but to gamely proceed with the farcical business at hand.

“One Man, Two Guvnors” was so dominated by Corden’s star-making performance (this was before his late-night talk-show days) that I assumed the play was a vehicle for a no-holds-barred clown. The effectiveness of the new production, co-directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott, is the ensemble approach to the comedy, with everyone expected to contribute their fair share of mirth.

Mahaffy may not be the most natural Zanni, the commedia term for the trickster servant who’s riddled with hunger and lust and always prepared to talk his way out of trouble. He works hard for his laughs, sometimes too hard, but he’s an endearing imp — an overwhelmed freelancer trying to survive the unforgiving gig economy of his age.

Cassandra Marie Murphy, left, and Christie Coran in “One Man, Two Guvnors” at A Noise Within.

(Craig Schwartz)

When the play begins, Francis is employed as the bodyguard of gangster Roscoe Crabbe, who has mysteriously returned from the dead. In fact, Francis is working for the gangster’s twin sister, Rachel Crabbe (Christie Coran), who has disguised herself as Roscoe to extract a debt from Charlie “The Duck” Clench (Henri Lubatti).

Charlie’s dim-bulb daughter, Pauline (Cassandra Marie Murphy), was betrothed to Roscoe, a known homosexual with a sadistic temper. It was to be a marriage of convenience — convenient business-wise for both Roscoe and Charlie. But after Roscoe’s reported death freed her from a frightening prospect, Pauline has become engaged to Alan Dangle (Paul David Story), a would-be actor whose every utterance of love is as hammy as it is sickly sweet.

Rachel is trying to obtain enough money to get married herself. Her intended, Stanley Stubbers (Ty Aldridge), an upper-class twit, murdered her thuggish brother, who was against their union. If she can collect the dowry from Charlie, she and Stanley can sail to Australia to escape the police and live happily ever after Down Under.

Lacking the money to buy even a single portion of fish and chips at a local pub, Francis agrees to be Stanley’s right-hand man. Francis is determined to keep his two bosses apart, a recipe for farcical mayhem, made all the more complicated by Rachel’s convincing drag act and Stanley’s ignorance of her master plan.

In true commedia style, character is destiny. The plot is prescribed by the constellation of types. Obstacles are set up only to be overcome in a stroke of mad luck or outlandish kindness. The longer the delay, the greater the satisfaction when everything is gaily resolved.

Christie Coran and Ty Aldridge in “One Man, Two Guvnors” at A Noise Within.

(Craig Schwartz)

But the route to the happy ending matters, and the actors make this journey a rollicking one. Aldridge’s Stanley is as obtuse as he is supercilious, a dangerous combination for Francis and a hilarious one for us. Coran’s Rachel plays a clever tough guy who puts on a vicious façade to avoid an actual fight. The performance — both in and within the play — works like a dream.

Murphy’s Pauline, a vacuous blonde too literal-minded for metaphor, and Story’s Alan, a scenery-chewer who hogs the spotlight, are a perfect match. Charlie, the transactional patriarch, is as proudly corrupt as his underhanded lawyer, Harry Dangle (Lynn Robert Beg), who sets an equally bad example for his kid, Alan.

Dolly (Trisha Miller), Charlie’s bookkeeper who capably sorts out whatever crooked business is put before her, becomes the romantic object of Francis’ exploits in the second act, when food becomes secondary to love — or its Majorca vacation equivalent, the holiday he dangles before her.

Toward the end of the first act, a serving scene involving a multicourse meal and an octogenarian waiter named Alfie (Josey Montana McCoy) with an adjustable pacemaker brings Francis’ mania for food to a feverish pitch. It’s an ingeniously choreographed slapstick routine, but the bit is even funnier after Francis conscripts a plant in the audience to assist him in hoarding food.

A production of “One Man, Two Guvnors” at South Coast Repertory in 2015 failed to summon the necessary vivacity. That’s where Rodriguez-Elliot and Elliot succeed, creating a party atmosphere through not just the hard-charging band (under the music direction of Rod Bagheri) but the mod scenic design of Frederica Nascimento and the jaunty vintage flair of Garry Lennon’s costumes.

Bean’s play is impressively worked out, mathematically and verbally. The wit is crisp and the comic routines are evergreen, all the more so for the sharpness of the playing.

Mahaffy’s Francis is unfailingly vivid as the self-serving valet of commedia tradition. But this production proves that “One Man, Two Guvnors” is more than a star vehicle for an insanely hungry clown.

“The general public was admitted to new Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the first time on Friday night — not to look at art but to listen to music,” wrote Times music critic Albert Goldberg in 1965. Exactly 70 years and three months later, history repeated itself.

Thursday night was the first time the public was allowed into LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries. The occasion was a massive sonic event led by jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington. More than a hundred musicians spread out in nine groups along 900-foot serpentine route of Peter Zumthor’s new building, still empty of art.

The celebration, which drew arts and civic leaders for the first of three preview nights, was far grander than the concert on March 26,1965, that opened LACMA’s Leo S. Bing Theatre the night before the doors opened to the museum’s original galleries. That occasion, a program by the legendary Monday Evening Concerts in which Pierre Boulez conducted the premiere of his “Éclat,” helped symbolize an exuberant L.A. coming of age, with the Music Center having opened three months earlier.

Monday Evening Concerts had been a true L.A. event drawing local musical celebrities including Igor Stravinsky and showing off L.A.’s exceptional musicians. The mandolinist in “Éclat,” for instance, was Sol Babitz, the father of the late, quintessential L.A. writer Eve Babitz. Boulez, an explosive composer, eventually turned the 10-minute “‘Éclat,’ for 15 instruments” into a 25-minute orchestral masterpiece, “Éclat/Multiples,” and left unfinished sketches behind to extend that to a full hour.

Kamasi Washington performing Thursday night.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Washington turned out to be the ideal radical expansionist to follow in Boulez’s footsteps for the new LACMA, with a resplendent enlargement of his 2018 half-hour EP, “Harmony of Difference.” The short tracks — “Desire,” “Knowledge,” “Perspective,” “Humility,” “Integrity” and “Truth” — employ nearly three dozen musicians in bursts of effusive wonder.

For LACMA, Washington tripled the number of musicians and the length. What some critics thought were bursts of bluster, however enthralling, became outright splendor. Introducing the program, LACMA Director Michael Govan called it an event that has never happened before and may never happen again. I got little sense of what this building will be like as a museum with art on the walls, but it’s a great space for thinking big musically and, in the process, for finding hope in an L.A. this year beset by fires and fear-inducing troops on our streets.

Washington is one of our rare musicians who thrives on excess. He has long been encouraged to aim toward concision, especially in his longer numbers, in which his untiring improvisations can become exhausting in their many climaxes. But that misses the point. I’ve never heard him play anything, short or long, that couldn’t have been three times longer. His vision is vast, and he needs space.

In the David Geffen Galleries, he got it. The nine ensembles included a large mixed band that he headed, along with ensembles of strings, brass, woodwinds and choruses. Each played unique arrangements of the songs, not quite synchronized, but if you ambled the long walkways, you heard the material in different contexts as though this were sonic surrealism.

A crowd gathers to watch Washington on Thursday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Acoustically, the Geffen is a weird combination. The large glass windows and angled concrete walls reflect sound in very different ways. Dozens of spaces vary in shape, size and acoustical properties. During a media tour earlier in the day, I found less echo than might be expected, though each space had its own peculiarities.

Washington’s ensembles were all carefully amplified and sounded surprisingly liquid, which made walking a delight as the sounds of different ensembles came in and out of focus. A chorus’ effusiveness gradually morphed into an ecstatic Washington saxophone solo down the way that then became a woodwind choir that had an organ-like quality. The whole building felt alive.

There was also the visual element. The concert took place at sunset, the light through the large windows ever changing, the “Harmony of Difference” becoming the differences of the bubbling tar pits nearby or the street life on Wilshire or LACMA’s Pavilion for Japanese Art, which looks lovely from the new galleries.

Govan’s vision is of a place where art of all kinds from all over comes together, turning the galleries into a promenade of discovery.

LACMA Director Michael Govan addressing the crowd Thursday night before Kamasi Washington performs.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Musically, this falls more in line with John Cage’s “Musicircus,” in which any number of musical ensembles perform at chance-derived times as a carnival of musical difference — something for which the Geffen Galleries is all but tailor-made. Nevertheless, Washington brilliantly demonstrated the new building’s potential for dance, opera, even theater.

The museum may not have made performance a priority in recent years, but Washington also reminded us that the premiere of Boulez’ “Éclat” put music in LACMA’s DNA. Seven decades on, Zumthor, whether he intended it or not, now challenges LACMA to become LACMAP: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Performance.